"Educators create the climate in their classrooms; their mood determines the weather; they have been entrusted with such powers to make good things happen," says Nancy Sullivan, the fifth grade teacher at Harrison C. Lyseth Elementary School in Portland. Mrs. Sullivan has channeled some of those powers into curriculum reform, reallocation of school resources and major revisions of assessments and instructional strategies. She has delivered seminars on staff development and led workshops in parent and community awareness throughout New England and nationally. Mrs. Sullivan has worked together with reading specialists to design "Turning the Tide"-a literature-based reading program which today serves as the primary approach to teaching reading to grades two through five at her school. The program also served as the model for LARK (Language Reading K-8), a city-wide literature program co-authored by Mrs. Sullivan.
